


can i lay by your side?

by aceofdiamonds



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 14:39:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11991837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceofdiamonds/pseuds/aceofdiamonds
Summary: Two days before he leaves The Burrow Ginny finds him in the kitchen. She pushes herself up onto the worktop, watches him make a sandwich, stealing half of it when he’s done. “This finding yourself trip,” she starts, her feet banging on the cupboard doors below, “is it something that needs to be done alone?”





	can i lay by your side?

  


A fortnight after the war ends Harry buys a car and packs a bag and says he’s going to travel the country, see if he can figure out what to do next. He’s been at a lost end since Voldemort fell to the ground and everything he’s known crumbled away with him. He needs to go out and find something new, not necessarily something magical, maybe something ordinary. Something to enjoy.

Two days before he leaves The Burrow Ginny finds him in the kitchen. She pushes herself up onto the worktop, watches him make a sandwich, stealing half of it when he’s done. “This finding yourself trip,” she starts, her feet banging on the cupboard doors below, “is it something that needs to be done alone?”

Harry finishes chewing before he can think of an answer. The year spent in a tent has told him how he feels about Ginny, that he feels the need to be with her whenever he can, that he wants to give her everything, even though she doesn’t want all of that. He knows he wants her and he thinks she might want him too, somehow she still loves him after everything, but they haven’t talked about it, haven’t tried anything, and so he has no idea what to say here. “Depends. Would you -- do you know someone who would be interested in coming?”

“I can think of someone who needs to get out of this place for a bit,” she says.

“You’re not needed around here?”

“Fuck, Harry.” She runs a hand across her forehead, through her hair. “I can’t breathe in here. I’m trying to be there for Mum and for George but I’m running out --” she breaks off, and then she’s staring at Harry, her eyes that same blazing look he’s seen so many times before. “Let me come with you, Harry. Please.”

And because he’s desperate and lonely and selfish he says yes, of course she can come.

“Thank you,” she says, eyes still burning and wet, because she doesn’t understand that he’s the one that should be thanking her.

  


.

  


It’s awkward at first. It’s not awkward between them -- Ginny’s always been one of the people Harry can be around easily -- but for the first few hours everything feels clunky and forced as they skate around death and the past and settle for pointing out cars as they speed past them.

“Ford Anglia,” Ginny points out, finger stretching across to Harry’s side. “Blue, like Dad’s.”

Harry feels his mouth twitch into something of a smile, and when he turns to look at her she's doing something of the same. He turns back to the road, scanning every car for -- “Gold Suburu, like Vernon’s.”

“When did you even learn to drive?” Ginny asks after a beat. “It doesn't seem like you've had time for much of that.”

“Crash course,” Harry says, indicating into the next lane. “It seemed necessary.”

“You planned for everything, didn't you?” And her tone isn't sad but almost admiring, all bases covered.

But Harry can't take all the credit. “That was Hermione,” he deflects. “I just prepared for ways to get us out of our messes.”

  
  


.

  
  


“How’s your sandwich?” Harry asks after another half an hour. His hands are tight on the wheel and his head is pounding. It’s not the same terrifying prickly heat that has been following him for the last few years but it’s bad enough for him to frown and make it worse.

“Alright,” Ginny shrugs. When Harry glances at her he catches an expression sliding across her face, something close to bored, almost reluctant. He doesn't want to end up having the same conversation he had with Ron all those months ago about not knowing what's going to happen and not basing everything on him. “Where are we going?”

“I don’t really have a destination in mind,” Harry says, rolling down his window and resting his elbow on the door. The warm May breeze rushes in, clears his head marginally, and he breathes. “What do you think?”

“This is your trip,” Ginny points out. She fiddles with the radio, searching for a song, for a sport, for anything she recognises. A blast of girl powered shouting, loud and thumpy, catches her attention. She settles back in her seat, closes her eyes, and Harry takes another breath. “Where’s your dream place?”

 _Anywhere where you are_ , almost slips out, which would be overly romantic and wrong for the mood, true as it may be, and Ginny wasn’t even supposed to be here when he bought the car and threw his bag inside, a blank page in his mind. “How do you feel about the Hebrides?”

“Like they’re on the top of the world, miles from mainland, and perfect,” Ginny replies, eyes still closed when Harry glances away from the road, her fingers tapping on her thigh as the radio plays.

  


.

  


It settles them, having somewhere to go. Ginny pushes a bottle of water into Harry’s hand, makes him drink it all, fills it up again with her wand, and at the end of the second one his headache is all but gone.

He wonders if it’s the water or if it’s the girl beside him with her bare freckled legs, her plaited hair, and her soft humming.

  


.

  


They check into a hotel just over the Scottish border because they're sick of sleeping in tents and hammocks in hidden rooms and, actually, they do it because they can.

They might be sixteen and seventeen but Harry charms his very new driving license to age him up a couple of years and signs before the receptionist can decide what age Ginny is. If she knew what the two of them had endured over the last year she wouldn’t see them as too young.

“When I was younger I didn’t think sixteen would be like this,” Ginny says, sitting on the edge of the double bed. It was all they had left but Harry thinks he should have looked for another hotel with twin beds. It’s been two weeks and talking with Ginny is easy but he doesn’t know where the lines are between them, blurred from afternoons by the lake, from hurried birthday kisses, from spending months and months apart. Hours in the car later and all he knows is that he wants to be with her, however way she’ll let him.

“What did you think it would be like?” he asks, turning in a circle to find the hard-backed chair by the desk.

Before he sits Ginny shakes her head. “Sit here, Harry. On the bed.” When he does she leans her head on his shoulder. “I thought it would be easier. That everything would be more carefree.”

“When I was sixteen,” Harry says quietly, “Everything felt easier than it should for two very short months.”

At first they lie there, bones stiff from the car and minds whirring too fast for either of them to stop and think. It's enough to lie beside Ginny and hear her breathing, a commodity he’s missed out a whole year of.

“Do you remember that afternoon?” Ginny whispers, rolling onto her side. “The day before my Transfiguration exam?”

The sun had been bright, the grounds empty, and Harry had laughed until his stomach hurt. Ginny’s books had lay abandoned on the grass next to their legs and she had kissed him hard enough to take his breath away, her laughter exploding into his mouth when his hand slipped at her waist.

“What'd you end up getting for that?” Harry asks, mind full of hot summer sun and the lightness of those few weeks.

“An O,” she tells him. “I’m very smart.”

He kisses her then, this beautiful smart girl. He kisses her, she kisses him, and everything has always been so natural with them that when it goes further and further until there’s nowhere else to go it feels nothing but right.

  


.

  


After, Harry burrows his face in Ginny’s neck, her body warm against his, and in this moment he feels ridiculously, unbelievably, more adult, more _human_ , than everything else he's done.

  


.

  


“Where did you get this?” Harry murmurs, tracing a finger down the scar that stretches along Ginny’s ribs. His finger stops, presses lightly into the tip of the scar. Ginny inhales, holds it.

“That’s a new one,” she deflects, pointing at the star burst across Harry’s heart.

“Ginny. Who did this?”

“Who do you think, Harry?” she sighs, sick of it. “The Carrows.” She places a hand on his chest, firm. “No. Don’t start saying about how you should’ve been there to protect me. I handled it fine.”

“I wasn’t going to say that --”

“Yes, you were. Don’t forget I know more about you than you think I do,” and Harry covers the scar on his heart because she doesn’t know the story of that one yet, of the snake and the wand and of Hermione’s quick-thinking. “I wish you were there because I missed you and I was worried about you, not because I wanted you to protect me.”

“I know that, Gin,” and he does. He always has known, little Ginny Weasley with her bold hexes and fiery temper, but she doesn’t always know that. “I thought about you every single day.”

“Ron mentioned something about the map?” Ginny says, a laugh falling out after it, and then she’s raising her head to kiss his warm cheeks. “You love me,” she whispers, looking at him. It’s a bold statement, a true one, and Harry hopes this hasn’t been something she’s second-guessing, even if she’s had every right to.

“I do,” and isn’t it amazing how easy it is to say when it’s what you’ve been waiting a whole year for?

Ginny kisses him softly, lingering over him when she pulls away. Her skin is so hot against his own he almost wants to shift away but instead he curls a hand in her hair and holds her closer. “I love you too,” she tells him, and through everything, through the tiredness permeating his bones, through the pain in his shoulder that won’t go away, through the constant guilt he’s been feeling, through all that, he glows.

  


.

  


The lines on the road blur underneath them as they talk about grief and dreams and everything in between. Harry listens to the hitch in Ginny’s voice when she mentions Fred, to the determined grit when he relays news he’s heard from Kingsley about rogue Death Eaters, to the laugh when he tells her a conversation he got caught between with Dean and Luna. He listens to everything she does and doesn’t say, knows she's doing the same in return.

After living in a tent with them for a year, Harry misses Ron and Hermione like an aching hole in his chest.

  


.

  
  


Someone looks at them too closely on the ferry to Skye and Harry tenses, his fist curling around his wand in his pocket.

But the woman approaches, apologises for interrupting, and Harry breathes out. “I’m sorry, dear, I couldn’t help but noticing how tired you both look -- are you okay?”

Harry slept relatively well last night, in comparison to all the others, and he knows Ginny managed about the same, but he wonders how they look to strangers from another world, two bedraggled kids with haunted faces and shaky hands.

Ginny steps in, “We were at a gig last night, early start this morning, you know how it is,” and smiles a tired smile.

“Oh, I’ve not been to one in years but aye, I remember them well.” She takes another look at them, rearranges her thoughts, “You both look like you need a warm bath and a good sleep,” which is an understatement, Harry almost says.

“As soon as we get in,” Ginny promises, squeezes Harry hand so he smiles. “Thanks, though, we appreciate your concern.”

“We’re all young once,” the woman says before she disappears.

Harry peers at Ginny, this time picking up the dark circles under her eyes, her pale skin, the scar peeking out her collar. “She’s right,” and then he sighs. “Maybe this was the wrong thing, bringing us both here, away from everyone.”

“It’s not,” Ginny says sharply, and Harry remembers her voice, her face, from the night in the Burrow when she asked him to take her with him.

“You’re right,” he says, kissing her forehead.

  


.

  
  


“Do you have nightmares?” Harry asks at the top of a hill on the Isle of Lewis.

Ginny turns away from the view of the sea, frowns. “Of course. We all do, don’t we?”

Harry scrubs a hand through his hair, tries not to scream, because here is a generation of wizards and witches who will forever be tainted by a war that he should have been able to stop sooner. “I wish I could do something better,” he says, head tipped towards the sky. It’s so bloody peaceful up here it sets him on edge.

“This is exactly where everyone needs you,” Ginny tells him. She steps up behind him, slips her arms around his waist, her cheek against his back. What she says next is almost lost into his t-shirt: “I need you, okay,” which, even after their confirmation of love and everything else they’ve entrusted in each other, is huge for her to say. “We can’t have you turning in on yourself.”

“Been talking about me with Ron and Hermione, have you?” Harry bites before he can swallow.

But Ginny says, “Yeah, I have,” doesn’t pretend otherwise, and that’s what Harry needs right now, someone to be straight with him, calling back to when Ginny reminded him that she had been possessed by Tom. They’re two broken souls, if you look at it like that, but Harry’s not sure he wants to. “We worry about you.”

Which is when Harry finds Ginny’s hand, holds it against him. “And I worry about everyone else.”

That gets a tiny laugh from Ginny, a sound that settles inside of Harry. “As if I thought that would change now that it’s all over.”

“It is all over, Ginny,” Harry says, turning around so he’s facing her. He’s always surprised by how tiny she is, all that power yet she barely comes up to his chin. He tucks his head over her shoulder. “But it isn’t, really,” because Fred will always be with them, because Colin and Tonks and Remus will always be with them, because they went through things, both together and separately, that have changed them, so, yes, the worst of it is over, but this is just the beginning of everything else.

But Harry doesn’t need to say all of this out loud because, like she said, Ginny is a smart girl.

“What should we do now that we’ve climbed this hill?”

“We climb back down,” Harry says, “And then -- food?”   

“Good.” Ginny lifts her head, raises a hand to brush Harry’s hair off of his forehead. Her thumb traces his scar and he leans into it. “It’s over, Harry, but we’re all still learning and we can’t do it by ourselves.”

“I’m glad you came with me, Gin,” he says for the first time. “I thought I wanted to drive off by myself but I’ve had too much of my own thoughts recently. Thank you for coming and for keeping me sane.”

She takes his hand, leads him off the summit. “This feels like what we needed,” and standing in the sun with a view like the one they have makes it very easy to agree that yes, time away from the world that needs him, with a girl he’s missed with his whole heart for a year, is exactly what he needed.

  


.

  


In lieu of sneaking into motels they’ve figured out a few charms that keep them under cover and warm during the night. It’ll be a long time before Harry sleeps in a tent again but with a Warming Charm and a couple of Conjured blankets it’s fine to sleep under the stars.

  


.

  


“Are you going to tell me everything one day?” Ginny asks as Harry drives down the motorway to Edinburgh, all of his trust in the Homing Charm he cast for directions.

He concentrates on overtaking a series of cars before he answers. “One day,” he says, which he hopes is enough for now because he’s told his story to so many people in the last fortnight that his throat is hoarse of Horcruxes and dreams. “I want to,” he adds, and that’s true. “But I can’t right now.”

Ginny accepts this with a shrug, her hand snaking over to grip his knee. “After this year I know what you mean. There are things that feel too big and scary to ever say out loud.”

“You know you can trust me, Ginny,” he says quickly, suddenly understanding that helplessness everyone else feels around him when he keeps his mouth too tight. “If you want to."

“Like you said, Harry. I do want to, not right now, but if we want to keep this going --”

And it’s still so early, everyone is still healing, but “I do,” comes easy.

And Harry looks away from the road to catch Ginny’s grin. “Me too. So in a while we’ll tell each other everything, okay?”

Isn’t this conversation huge for people, for _children_ , halfway through their teens? Isn’t this conversation one that feels necessary, feels right, for people who shouldn’t be holding these thoughts in their heads? But they survived a war, they made it out of the other side, and they’re going to try their best to live alongside one another.

Harry agrees with a nod, his hand fumbling for hers over the gear stick.

  


.

  


They spend a couple of days in Edinburgh looking at shops, seeking out alleys that show tell-tale signs of magic. Harry is recognised a few times, each time causing a war of relief, gratitude, and frustration inside of him. A couple of people recognise Ginny as well, her hair an identifier in place of absent scars. Afterwards she pulls the sleeves of her top over her hands, won’t look at Harry, and mumbles that she can knows now what it’s like to be seen as some kind of figure that you’re not.

“All I did was keep fighting,” she says, confused at the fourteen year old girl who, on an early holiday from school as the castle mends its wounds, had thanked her for her role in protecting the students from the Carrows in a bookshop just off The Royal Mile.

“You gave them hope,” Harry points out. “That’s what they needed.”

  


.

  
  


“Are you ready to go home?” Harry asks Ginny during their last night.

Ginny props herself onto one elbow, her hand braced on Harry’s chest. “I think I am.”

They’re not naive, they know they have a long way to recovery, but this time has been good for them. Their grief has settled around their shoulders in a way that is not comfortable but nor is it suffocating -- it’s something that will stay with them for longer than they can imagine but they will adapt and they will heal. At home they have the Weasleys, they have their friends, and they have Teddy. With those in mind Harry holds Ginny's hand in his and he breathes. 

 

 


End file.
